All the power to you for finding a niche market, but suckers be warned that it's highway robbery!
edit: downvoted within 2 minutes of posting this without a reply. i guess you guys were looking for a AAA+++ , would buy again review. what a joke
edit2: Sorry for coming off as harsh, but this sort of domain related shit has been plaguing the net for a long time
The value of a product is usually not cost of labor + cost of materials, it's the value it brings to the buyer. $106.99 won't get me the same value, because I have to spend long frustrating hours trying to find a decent available domain name, then a few more hours going back and forth with a designer for a logo I may or may not like. Not having to do that is easily worth $143.01.
I agree that the domain system is horribly broken, but these guys are closer to a solution than to a problem.
While it seems the database hasn't been updated in awhile, it definitely gives very good/quick results without hours of work.
They could charge 4x as much and probably close just as much business, because $1000 is a rounding error for a serious 2-person startup.
I don't see why you're bagging on them.
It's somewhat analogous to say most software patents, in that their sole purpose seems to be enacting a social cost. You're not going to do anything with that patent/domain, you're just going to wait until someone else thinks of it as well.
Their process does not add value. Let me reiterate: Allow me to buy the name at a discount price, but still at a 600% or so markup over the $8 price. Add value to the process by allowing me to bundle more of your services and maybe you'll have a customer.
I know someone who does this for a living. And I know for a fact he sold some domain for 500x as much. He has a $100,000 chest just to buy domains and sit on them for years if necessary. For larger domain acquisition he usually gets the money from other sources.
There is a lot of other value you're buying here - the selection of the name, the connection of the name and an aesthetic, the skills for which don't magically appear in people overnight.
Did you look at the site? Care and consideration has been exercised in the branding of these names, from colors to typography. If the "raw materials" are indeed $99 + $7.99, then $250 is a good deal for what amounts to 1.5-2 hours of skilled work to create this finished product.
[This one](http://stylate.com/portfolio/sporous-com/) is just the domain name in a particular font. They don't even include rights to the font! That is bullshit.
I'm echoing the "lipstick on a pig glorifying domain squatting." These guys are like upscale spammers, or group buying discount sites.
Something that has escaped many people who are in the habit of helping people for nothing is that their knowledge has value to others as a time saver among other things.
Back when NSI was essentially the "Internic" a living could be made by simply knowing how to submit a form to them to register a domain on behalf of a customer. If you (as an end user) wanted to take the time to learn how to do the same thing (which didn't require a medical school education of course) you could avoid those charges.
At that point I'm looking to spend some time and get it done properly.
Have you ever spent months of manpower and thousands of dollars coming up with a name for your company? I suspect not, otherwise it would be crystal clear what the value of this service is, and what an absolute steal $250 is. Nobody expects $7 for a domain these days. You might as well complain about how land is so expensive, considering it was all claimed for pennies per acre less than 200 years ago.
I don't even care for the logo -- to me it simply provides a demonstration that it's possible to create a decent sounding/looking brand from the name.
As for highway robbery -- well, that's fine if you think that. Again I wonder if you've ever been told that the minimum offer for a domain is 5 figures. You can go ahead and insist on your non-existent right to a $7 registration if you please, but pragmatic people who need to get things done ASAP will recognize this as an incredible offer.
If you do ever offer a product or service, what will you say when your customer insists that your price solely reflect the cost of materials and labor?
EDIT: updated
This is great, I see two or three on there that'd work for a prototype i'm working on and may decide to release as a proper app.
Saves precious time and is worth it. Some half decent logos as well.
A steal or good deal is not a reason to buy something in every case. In fact you can end up buying things that you don't need.
This is the philosophy of loss leaders. Things that get you into a store based on a deal only to have you end up buying something you didn't necessarily need on inpulse.
There is no way that it could be said any better.
If your local agency that charges $3k for a logo is Ruth Chris Steakhouse, these guys are McDonalds - and I mean that as a compliment.
(No affiliation except as a customer)
As a founder, I want to personalise my domain, and design, and that means coming up with different concepts, and searching whois until I find a good match that's available ... The design then has to represent what the product is about in a non-generic way ... The designs on this site are far too generic for my taste
I can't imagine myself going to that page with a concept and saying 'AHA, that's exactly what I wanted' ... Possibly it could in reverse if someone is looking for inspiration for their next startup ...
By all means, do the things you talk about when it's time--but that time is usually not at the beginning.
I have a lot of ideas I put on the backburner 'cause I'm busy with other things. The value in this isn't just the domain, it's the "packaging" of the entire first part of the process. I do this on themeforest too.. browse landing pages for one startup, but maybe buy a landing page that happens to be suited to another random startup idea, if I saw it.
Good luck to you, sirs / madams.
I'm sure they'll be sold out by the end of the day.
I am not too comfortable with this service though, i don't like the thought of you squatting away hundreds of good startup names. Partly because the price point of $250 sounds very expensive to me, at least as someone sitting in India.
But these prices aren't completely unreasonable, they come with (generally quite decent) logos, and they would save a startup countless hours of faffing over domains.
Flagged.
These guys are actually helping, by doing the hard work of sifting through the relatively few good ones still available and charging a fair price for the effort.
Save all your outrage for the real scumbags and the ICANN organization that makes them possible.
As far as blackballing, I can think of one super well known tech figure who came from the domain industry - Michael Arrington.
2. Adding value
3. Not using means such as using expiring names
4. Not using "bottom feeder" tactics like parking page advertising.
From wikipedia: cybersquatting:
" or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else"
What goodwill or trademark are they misusing?
[Edit: For formatting, but couldn't get it to look like I want.]
You mean trademarked.
They're adding value to a domain & selling it at (what I believe to be) a reasonable price. They're clearly investing time coming up with ideas for domains that they can create decent logos for. You would easily pay $500+ for a 'good' logo.
This is sort of like the domain-squatter's equivalent of department store mannequins: visual aids that help shoppers picture what the items could look like in practice, sparking their imaginations, and thereby convincing them to buy. In this case, the logos are really just giveaways to sell visually and tangibly what would otherwise be abstract names. Again: it's kind of a stroke of genius, but it's a stroke of genius in a questionable profession.
So I end up with very mixed feelings here. Kudos to this guy for innovating, and for doing a good job at it. But I fear the rise of a second domain-squatting gold rush, when/if a bunch of squatters copy this model en masse and set up squat + design sweatshops to crank them out.
The absolute worst thing that can happen is that you show your idea to someone and they're totally indifferent.
That some people love this and others hate it, and that you've generated hundreds of comments, shows that this is worth pursuing.
Bookmarked for next time I get stuck thinking of names. My usual process is to think of an idea I think is great, spend 2-3 days thinking of names, set up a domain and landing page. Saving that 2-3 days for $250 is something I'd seriously consider.
Often these ideas are impulses that consume me for a week or two, then I get bored of them or find someone else who's already doing a great job of filling the need.
I would experiment with pricing - at $250 it's not an impulse buy. It is a fantastic price for someone who is seriously starting a company, but I have a hunch that people like me (who have a day job but regularly come up with ideas they love and obsess over for a week or two, that then fizzles out to nothing) is a larger market and has potential for repeat purchases. If you can tap into that you may find more revenue, cashing in on the empty dreams of dilettantes like me :)
It is far easier to pick a random name and match it with some random generic branding, than to be given MySpecificProduct.com and build a brand around that. Branding companies charge a lot of money because it (generally) takes a lot of time, effort and expertise to build good brands.
There is also the fact that it would become a designer-client relationship than a merchant-customer one. Clients get to dictate what they want (to a certain extent), customers see what they are getting before they buy. What if they built a brand around MySpecificProduct.com and you didn't like it?
You can always iterate later if necessary, but this gives you something to use NOW, and put the discussion away and get back to real work.
Also, I love the layout. Very straightforward. I currently subscribe to the http://justdropped.com/ mailing list which has daily domain names that he buys as they expire.. I could see something similar for your site, but with logos attached.
Also, a NewsLetter would be a great way for me to keep up with the (weekly?) new designs you add to the store.
Keep it up!
A URL alone does not makes a site or a success.
Seriously? You've given up on an idea because you couldn't find a domain name? Your idea is contingent on a domain?
* altavista.digital.com * del.icio.us * thefacebook.com
I'm trying to figure out what "TweetBump" is. The obvious answer is: It's Twitter, plus Bump. You wander around a party bumping phones with folks, and every time you do that both of you automatically Tweet "I bumped into [X] at [Awesome Location Y]".
(No obvious business model, though. ;)
(And I'm not a Bump user, so I wouldn't exactly be surprised to learn that the app has already supported this for years. ;)
Sometimes you can spend 3-20 hours trying to figure out a name, domain, and branding. I'd pay a couple hundred bucks to skip that step. I wish this existed all those previous times I was stuck grinding on names!
If I was starting out something new I'd def check here, and use this as a starting point, use the logo to start a basic site, get a letter head made and some business cards done - bang, hours save, cost of a decent logo save, headaches saved.
Plus, you can change your name when ever you like - people get so overly stressed about names, as though the .com is the most important thing.
Love the fixed $250 price.
Great work guys.
Serves me right for having worked almost 4 years for a very large mobile games developer here in Argentina and having seen 40% of my paycheck being eaten away by inflation in the last few years.
I simply can't afford these domains, I would have loved to have them turned into full blown sites, just for fun!
Congratulations to the people that purchase them... please treat them nice :)
$250 it too cheap.
Nonetheless, this is a superb idea, which can become easily profitable.
I'd be surprised if most of the domains are not sold quickly.
I wonder if you'd consider locking in the matching Twitter, YouTube, etc. names as well. I'm afraid that if you don't now unscrupulous people will start scanning the site and picking those up.
And the thought of spending $250/month on beer and coffee is disturbing. I spend $15 ;)
Now the following is a bit offtopic, but the thoughts are what I have in mind for quite a time.
Look how many startups are there around whose only purpose is to connect or extract information from other startups whose again are build on the top some previous startups. Where is a stop for this? Where's the creativity? Where's the thinking of making things that people really need?
This looks like a rant but please think of it analytically:
1. People start to use product A because it fills some temporary niche.
2. The conditions of the niche vanish, but the product is still used, the user base grows because of inertia, marketing, whatever.
3. As the initial conditions dissolved the product A isn't exactly what people need at the moment, so there emerge products B & C built on the top of A with even more fragile conditions: only to support momentary lack of desired features in A.
Any similarity with existing startup scene?
Well, what if all these products were build based on some more unconditional needs of the users in the first place?
Startup owners are people that need things too - often really good customers to work with as they understand the time involved in building a product and will pay for services that save them time/money.
If anything, startups selling to startups is fantastic news as:
1. It's creating an ecosystem of small, independently owned businesses - a vibrant self-contained economy.
2. Good marketing is selecting a niche that is small enough to compete in but large enough to build a profitable business. It validates that startups are a successful enough business model that there's enough people in that community to constitute a profitable niche market.
3. It doesn't matter if the need is not permanent - all customer needs are transient given a long enough timeframe. If I have a problem I'll pay to solve then I'm not thinking about whether I'll have the same problem in 10 years, just that I want it solved right now.
I'm sure it'll be a reasonable success and generate you some cash, but on the other hand, seeing someone holding a creative grab bag of interesting domains and concepts that they're only hoping to flip for a profit makes me uneasy.
There are a lot of clever, interesting names here though, and I can definitely see someone who has a concept without a a title seeing a lot of value in paying $250 for something like this. It's more than likely a hell of a lot cheaper than most domain squatters (which isn't exactly what i'd call this) would charge for the domain alone.
My major fear - the owner of this content might find someone who uses a similar name as one of their concepts-for-sale, and attempt to sue them without being able to properly verify if said person actually ripped them off, or just themselves came up with the idea coincidentally. It's one of those slippery slope endeavors.
I'm torn over whether I like "Feastable", "WhamBox", or "PixelKeg" the most. Definitely some great names here.
I just paid $1650 for a domain. That was a ton of money for me, but when someone already has it, you don't have a lot of leverage.
If I was starting another company, I would use this in a second. fueza.com anyone?
Seeing a domain name with an MVL (Minimum Viable Logo, haha) is really much better for imagining how strong it could be than just seeing it listed in text.
However, I found the selection too limited. So I think an interesting model for you would become a marketplace: 1- invite squatters with domains to sell to post their names on your site 2- invite designers to freely create logos to un-logoed domains 3- sell this wider selection to your audience, sharing the revenue with both squatters and designers.
Good luck - with more selection, I would easily find the service worthwhile at that price point.
At first, it's interesting. But think about it. Pre-purchasing domains throwing a brand on top is really as bad as implementing a software/web application without doing any market research. Chances are it's really not what people want. Unlike dead software/web apps, however, these domain names become worse than useless by block others from making something great.
The title here is misleading but the site does a good job explaining what they are offering. And I think that they are providing good value. When you are starting out the last thing you need to do is waste a lot of time and money on a name and logo. With this service, you just pick one and forget about it then move onto more important matters.
Choosing a name is supposed to be difficult. You're supposed to brainstorm for hours, bounce ideas off your friends and second guess yourself. Having to go through this pain to get to the right name adds character to the business through authenticity.
Choosing a name from a list of pre-created brands, clever or not, is a cop out.
Best of luck, though. I'm sure you'll do well.
I think they should create a tool that does this name and custom logo creation then doing it themselves. Dont see how they sell much
Other than that I am not that impressed, the logos look pretty generic/standard. Maybe that kind of thing could work for small businesses (like restaurants), though.
But what about small web apps? This should work very well for them.
I own LunchMeet.com and paid 5 figures for it when at the time I intended to develop a startup.
Now I want to sell it. Is it squatting if I am just trying to get my money back?
Feature request: I'd love to subscribe to categories and get updates when you add new domains. E.g. "Please email me when you have a new domain related to health or hardware."
If you have free time, do it yourself.
Currently not using HeyBTW with Heybtw.com, heyb.tw, @heybtw
@stylater
Though a reverse hijacking costs more than $250
Nicely designed site, though. Looks great.
As I see it you get a working logo matched with a domain you like, even if it's not your final visual identity it's at least a start.
The amount of time/headache it takes to brand a startup should not be underestimated. I think that the logos are fine to get started quickly but probably would all need to be changed in the long run, but no big deal, you've provided a decent enough starting point where it doesn't look shitty atleast and can allow someone to build their product while still having a decent looking thing on their site.
We spent several WEEKS of all hands on deck and lots of $$$ (Well over $10k for the domain name, banners, stationery etc) as a company rebranding from Transparent Financial Services (http://transfs.com) to FeeFighters (http://feefighters.com). Had we started with something better than transfs from the beginning we wouldn't have had the problem (btw, it's still a pain in the ass because google apps doesn't let you change your name, so we still only have a duct tape solution where our google apps are still @transfs and I occasionally still send an email from @transfs - embarassing!). Plus, we lost all the google juice we'd built up over that time (which was considerable - TransFS was a PageRank 5 site and FeeFighters had none).
At that point (post-funding), our time and pagerank were a lot more important than the money.
More on our rebrand that might be useful to people (you now have to pay to see the video but can download the audio and read transcript for free): http://mixergy.com/sean-harper-feefighters-intervie/
Looking through the brands, nothing really fits any of my current projects but I would definitely consider coming back to check again and again.
These logos are for the most part gobsmackingly awful. I'm genuinely surprised that there's no Comic Sans among them. Robogenerating words with free fonts you dug up on some website is not the same thing as a 'Design Service'.
http://stylate.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/burntfood_smal...
http://stylate.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/usante_small.p...
REALLY? Those are worth more than a cold cup of coffee?
I thought it sounded like a great idea from the link title, and I'd have no issue with the price if there was any actual value in the value-add.
Looking at the list of domains on offer, half of them are 'empty vessel' nonsense words which could quite easily be generated with the same amount of personal effort using something like Wordoid[1]. The other half are nothing more than Monkey Tennis[2], i.e. word pairings thrown out there in the hope that someone else will build a product around it[3].
[1] http://www.wordoid.com/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_tennis [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS1le_8ZhOU&t=1m30s
That said - most people put too much weight on a name, but it's really important to be sure the name is A) memorable (this doesn't mean weird or unique), B) easy to spell and C) easy to Google.
Names that are weird spellings or made-up words are NOT memorable, basically because they don't fit into a ready-made slot in the readers' head. (Plus if they are hard to spell, you're SOL.)
It's far better to have a memorable name like "Charm" and then append crap to the end of the domain (e.g. CharmHQ.com) to ensure you can grab the domain, than it is to have a short, unique name where you get the regular name.com.
This conclusion is based on my extensive reading of cogsci research about memory, word association, etc.
Depending on what you are doing you can change your name/brand later.
Since /most/ start-ups fail, why not get to market quicker, with less cost, and less time/brain power wasted.
That's not to say they won't sell some domains for more than $1000 because, they own premium domains, as well as LLL.com's NNN.com's etc but your generalisation that a .COM is worth $1000 is wrong.
That brings us to the final piece of the puzzle: a site where you can invest in a "team" that has no idea and no technology.
Then the guys who walk around with bags of money evaluating teams and business propositions will finally be able to just mix and match to whatever they want, thinking (as they already do) that they're the ones adding all the value. Which, to be fair, under capitalism they probably do.
You could condense the entire Silicon Valley startup funding scene into a single transaction.
